iLLmatic

A little over twenty years ago a kid from Queens bridge put out an album that would force a lot of rappers to rethink the way they approached their craft.

In the neighborhood where I grew up (which was definitely not NYC) their was an enclosed dead end street where kids would park, smoke, drink and eventually toss their shit when the cops showed up. My friends and I would sift through the jettison the following day to see what we could make use of.

In what I can only assume some 20 years later was a fit of panic, some poor soul happened to toss a cassette tape out of their car. Maybe they were using it as a flat surface to roll something or just grabbed whatever they could when they spotted the red and blues.

Needless to say that cassette tape was none other than iLLmatic by NAS...not knowing what it was, I grabbed it first. Mine.